He pivots, and I hear my door crash closed with a loud slam and then I feel the wood against my back and his hands clutch my hips, fingers digging into my flesh, gripping hard.
I feel need soaking me.
I’m naked, and I don’t even care.
Glad of it, if anything.
His mouth tears away from mine, and I gasp at the abrupt loss of his mouth on mine, whimper to express somehow that I want his kiss back.
I get it—I get his kiss back.
Not on my mouth.
He kisses my throat. The hollow at the base of my throat.
The no-man’s-land between my throat and the apex of my cleavage. My hands tangle in his hair and my eyes are closed and my head tilted up and all I can feel is his mouth on my skin, kissing me and licking and nipping.
His mouth on my skin tells me in a way no amount of words ever could that he finds me beautiful. More than beautiful.
That he needs me.
It’s not want, not desire—it’s need.
His mouth travels lower. One hand cups my breast and lifts it reverently, kneads it and thumbs the nipple until I’m gasping with the sensation. And then his mouth covers my breast and he’s suckling and licking and I’m delirious.
The other breast receives the same attention, and I’m gasping, moaning. Who am I? Who is he? What’s happening? I know none of the answers in this moment and don’t even care.
This feels incredible, and it’s all I care about.
I don’t dare even breathe as he drops to his knees. Stopping him never even enters my mind.
I am a creature of pure physical need, right now, and all I care about is what he’s doing to me. I don’t care who he is. I don’t care what comes next. All I care about is more.
I never knew it was possible to feel this way from pure desire, from raw need, from nothing more than his mouth on my flesh.
My nipples are hard, my skin tight. My breathing is hoarse and ragged. My knees dip, but he’s holding me up. One hand cups my ass, squeezes, caresses, holds. The other is on my tits, exploring one and the other and both. And his mouth is on my belly. Kissing my hipbone.
Who am I, allowing this to happen?
I don’t care. I’ll be whoever I need to be, if only he won’t stop.
I want to feel good. More. More.
I hear myself saying it. “More.” It’s a raw, ragged whisper. “More.”
His cheeks, unshaven for days, are rough on the tender silk of my inner thighs. When his lips touch my sex, I cry out loud, a wordless sound of incredulous, wondrous need.
He growls.
And then his tongue parts my folds and flicks against the aching flower of my clit, and I’m lost, lost, lost. He’s doing this. To me.
My knees threaten to give out, but somehow I know he won’t let me fall. I sag against the door and thrust myself against his mouth with a wanton, growling whimper of savage desire. Hold on to his head, fingers knotted in his hair. Rock against his tongue.
And holy hell, if I’d thought he was skilled at kissing my mouth, it’s nothing compared to his artistry at kissing my sex. He has the mouth of a god. Teasing, driving, maddening. He brings me to the cusp within seconds but then slows and draws me away, and then higher and closer to the edge once more, only to pull me back yet again.
One hand is still reaching up to fondle my breasts, and the other now traces my folds as he pulls his mouth away for a moment, and then I feel his finger entering me. Just one, but it’s thick and he knows my insides, knows where to touch me, and I cry out. With one finger inside me, he brings me to the edge a third time.
Pulls that finger out. Immediately, I feel myself clench around the loss of his touch—but he’s there again with two fingers sliding through my wetness, and I whimper, rock against the fingers as they penetrate me and then his mouth fuses over my sex where I’m aching for him and throbbing for more. His tongue swirls and flicks and his fingers drive in and out with a hooking motion, and each time his fingers find my depths, I’m wrenched closer and closer to the edge of release, and now I am fraught with need—not just need now, not a nebulous but potent feeling of mere desire. No, this is more. This is a need on an atomic level for release.
“Please,” I rasp, whispering hoarsely. “Please.”
His answer is a growl against my sex.
His answer is to push me over the edge and push me past it into wild delirium with mouth and with tongue and with fingers, tweaking my nipples and cradling my breast and tonguing my clit with furious circles and driving his fingers inside me with nearly violent speed, but it’s what I need, what I want.
“Oh…oh…oh fuck,” I cry. “Yes…god, yes. Yes!”
My scream is frantic and wild.
I shake, and I explode, and everything inside me clenches, detonates, implodes, all at once. Heat and pressure and release and insanity, it’s all a whirlwind inside me, and I’m trembling and crying with broken sobs of release, because I have never even conceived of such a climax. My orgasm wrenches through me viciously, beautifully, wringing me into trembling paroxysms.
I cling to him, gasping.
He stands up, and I’m disoriented, shaky.
For the first time since his lips met mine, I look him in the eyes. And I see…
Pure, potent, undeniable masculine need. His eyes rake over my naked form and in his expression I read appreciation for my body—it’s written on his face in bold, all caps.
“Fuck…” he snarls. “Delia, you are so goddamn…beautiful.” Like he can’t believe it. Like he can’t believe he’s saying it. Like he can’t believe what just happened any more than I can.
His voice, his words ruin the spell.
Thai Bristow just barged into my house and kissed me.
Thai Bristow just went down on me.
And it was beyond incredible.
I LET him.
I begged him for more.
My eyes fill with confused tears.
Panic sears through me like a bolt of lightning.
What did I just do? What did I just allow Thai to do to me?
“Thai…” I whisper, my voice barely audible. “You have to go.”
His eyebrows lower in in confusion. “Delia, I—”
“Go. You have to go. I can’t—that wasn’t…” I shake my head, yanking away from him, snatching my towel and covering myself with it. “Please. Just go.”
His expression clears, as if he came to some realization. “Ah. Got it.”
“That…that shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have allowed it.”
Savagely, angrily, he yanks open my door. He doesn’t look back. He’s gone, door slamming closed behind him.
What have I done?
Chapter Thirteen
Matthais
I don’t even know who I am, anymore.
I drive home, but my mind is not on the road. Fortunately, I know this town and all its roads like the back of my hand, even now.
Everything hurts.
My legs ache. My lungs feel singed, scorched.
My head throbs, my mouth is dry, my throat parched.
My cock is a raging monster, so hard you could drive nails with it.
Worst of all, my pride—my heart.
I had hoped she would look at me differently.
I was hoping she’d see—she’d feel—the genuine truth and desire in my kiss.
Instead, she looked horrified at what she’d done, and asked me to leave.
So, I left.
She let me in. She let me kiss her. I fucking…I know for a fact I left zero room for doubt as to what I intended before I planted it on her, before I ever touched her. And…once we were kissing, I know she liked it. She was legit whimpering, moaning. Hands in my hair, eyes closed. She was the one who let her towel drop—I didn’t snatch it off.
She was into it.
She wanted what I was giving her, and damn right she got the best O of her life. I have no doubts on that score.
I’m n
ot upset about anything so dumb and pedestrian as not getting off myself. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, my balls ache and my hard-on refuses to quit.
It’s about the way she acted afterward. Like she’d just been caught slumming it with some trash bag.
Sure, I’ve earned her enmity, but that shit still stings.
It occurs to me, as I pull into my condo parking lot and jam the shifter into park, that she had been out on a date with Tyler James Thomas, he of the pleated slacks and three names and loafers.
Did she fuck him last night?
God, I don’t want to know.
Except, shit, I kind of do. Because I just had my mouth on her.
Even that can’t put a damper on my erection. I have a messenger bag on my passenger seat; it’s after 8 a.m. and I’m likely to encounter someone either in the hall or elevator, and I can’t exactly hide the monster in my shorts, not in its current state.
Sure enough, as I exit the elevator on my floor, there’s a young woman with two small kids waiting to get on. I sling my bag in front and paw through it as if looking for something as I pass them, hoping I’d gotten the bag around in front in time.
Another thought occurs to me, a few steps from the elevator—I probably smell like…Delia, let’s say.
And that poor girl I passed probably got a whiff.
Not my problem.
Get home.
Lock the door behind me.
Throw the bag and my phone onto the couch, kick off my shoes, strip naked on the way to the shower. I ache, throb.
The water gets hot fast, and I step in. Put my back to the spray and brace one hand on the opposite wall. This time, I feel no compunction about bringing up a mental image of Delia as I grip myself. Fuck, though—she has no right being that damned sexy.
Her tits are even better than I imagined they’d be. Perfect teardrops—plump and round at the bottom, big pink nipples dead center. Squishy but firm. Natural. God…those tits.
All of her was…just perfect. Everything I never knew I wanted in a woman’s body. Ass for days, to explore and play with. Her sex was trimmed but not shaved, tight, wet, responsive. She clenched around my fingers like a vise.
The way she moaned.
Please.
She’d rocked against my mouth, begging for more. Her scream as she came had been the sweetest music my ears have ever heard.
I kept an image of her in my mind as I stroked myself, not fast this time, not roughly jerking myself and just getting it over because I was embarrassed to be thinking about her. No, I think now I’ve earned this. And there’s no embarrassment, because Delia McKenna is fucking gorgeous.
I wish it was her hands around me, right now.
Her mouth.
Her sweet slick wet folds sliding against me.
Taking me.
I empty myself with a gritted-teeth snarl.
But yet, mere minutes later as I wash off, I’m still thinking about her. And within seconds of thinking about her, I’m harder than ever.
It’s going to be a long, long day.
I manage strained cordiality with her, throughout the day. When I get a call from the Karsten build that they need me on-site to approve some changes, I’m relieved. Just to be away from her.
She won’t look at me in the eyes. And honestly, I get it.
After the things she’d admitted to me after the run, I get it. I earned her hatred, a thousand times over. But…the more time goes by and the more time I spend around her, the more I realize I’m really not that guy anymore. Working every day puts a new spin on things. Accomplishments feel good. Making decisions, getting shit done, making a difference…it all feels good, in a different way than making a monetary investment and seeing it pay off.
The following week, Marcus comes into the office for a presentation of…wait, they changed their name. Tree-Free Construction Supply, with an updated logo, a pine tree in a circle with a line through it, Ghostbusters’ style.
I clap Marcus on the back as he enters the conference room. “Tree-Free.” I shake his hand. “Simple, easy. I like it.”
He grins. “Only took four focus groups, three surveys, and a week of solid debate to settle on it and the new logo, but we’re happy with the final product.”
“Worth it. It works.” I take my seat at the far end of the table. “So, I’m not gonna try to jump your pitch here, but are you scaled up for full framing yet?”
He sets about organizing his notes and pulling up his PowerPoint. “Yeah, we are. That’s the short version. The longer answer is my presentation.” He glances at me. “Do I have you to thank for this opportunity? McKenna was always one of our big fish, the account we dreamed of one day landing. This is…way sooner than we could have imagined.”
“Yeah, you guys just came up in conversation one day, and it turns out my partner and I share some ideas.”
Delia breezes in, and I keep my expression neutral. Inside, I’m dying.
She’s wearing a skin-tight black leather skirt, strappy calf-height wedge-heel black sandals, an emerald blouse that seems to accentuate her cleavage without showing any actual skin at all. Her hair is loose, brushed to a glossy shine, wavy, dangling to mid-back.
Teasing me, dressed like that. That’s what she’s doing.
Not really—it’s no different than how she always dresses, and it’s perfectly standard business attire for a successful CEO.
The problem is I’m just horny for her, and now everything she wears drives me crazy.
And I can’t show a whit of it.
Marcus is frozen, staring at her. “Who the hell is that?” he hisses to me.
I grin, amused. “That, my friend, is Delia McKenna. CEO of McKenna Construction, and my partner.”
“You’re a full partner? Not just an investor?”
“Fifty percent owner, and co-executive with Delia. Although, she’s the real expert. I’m still new to the business, while she’s been running this show since she was a kid, and I mean that literally.”
Her intensely blue eyes fix on me for a second, and I knew she heard me. Then to Marcus. “Good morning, Marcus. I’m Delia.”
He rounds the table and shakes her hand, a little too eagerly. “Yeah, hi, I’m Marcus, with Tree-Free Construction Supply. I just want to express how grateful I am for the opportunity to even be here. Of course, I hope you like our product, but just being able to make this pitch is a huge win, in my book.”
Everyone else is floating in, and Delia looks distinctly uncomfortable—he’s still shaking her hand, and she’s clearly trying to politely pull her hand back, but he’s oblivious. Nerves and excitement have clearly gotten the better of him.
To the rescue.
I leave my chair and grab him around the shoulders with chummy familiarity, giving him a rough, playful shake. “Down boy,” I say with a laugh. “It’s all good. Now, I think we’re all here, so you can get started whenever you’re ready.”
Delia gives me a wide-eyed look of amused amazement, and then a wincing grimace. I just wink at her, and then while I’m up pour myself a cup of coffee…and one for Delia. Black, with a touch of creamer, how I’ve noticed she likes it.
Back in my seat, I ignore the way Delia is staring into her coffee as if trying to understand how it got there. As if me doing something nice for her is some kind of apocalyptic miracle.
Marcus has his laptop connected, has his presentation cued up, papers and notes shuffled and straightened. “All right. Here we go.”
Once he’s started and talking about his product and vision, he’s smooth and professional. He starts small, goes over their line of minor products, detailing their specs and how many different places have orders for them and sharing rave reviews, and then he pauses to dig a clear plastic divided organizer from his bag, in which is a sampling of the smaller pieces, so everyone at the table can get a feel for the actual product.
“And now, for the product I’m sure you’re all eager to hear about—our framing sections.” He changes the
slide, and it’s a video. “Rather than tell you about them, we put together this short video to show you what we can do.”
It’s a slickly produced piece of marketing, showing the production of the framing sections from start to finish, and then there’s a time-lapse of a house being built, using Tree-Free products exclusively.
When the video ends, he holds out his hands in a ta-da gesture. “As you can see, you can use our framing sections in conjunction with traditional lumber and all that. But obviously, our goal is to provide a whole line of products, from framing and roofing trusses and shingles to subflooring, flooring, wiring, plumbing, lighting…everything. If you use it to put up a building, we have plans for it. Including basic two-by lumber, which will cut more easily and with less mess than wood, for a fraction of the price and a fraction of a fraction of the total impact on our planet.”
I look around, and I can tell everyone is at least intrigued, and some are visibly impressed.
Delia is harder to read. “These are built to match the standard pre-built framing sections you can buy from anywhere else?”
Marcus nods. “Absolutely. Exactly the same dimensions in every way. They’re interchangeable.”
“And you claim that they’re stronger?”
“I’m not just claiming—it’s proven fact. Wait—here, I brought documentation…” He rummages in his folder and comes up with a stapled stack of papers, which he sends around the table to Delia, who flips through it. “Stress tests show our product is demonstrably superior, and not just a little bit, but a lot. You can see the numbers for yourself, there.”
She nods. “I see. And cost?”
Marcus goes into an in-depth discussion of cost breakdown, but I can see on Delia’s face that she’s sold before he gets halfway through. It’s a duh, though. Superior product for less. Easy win.
“And what about your capacity for order fulfillment? Can you provide uninterrupted, reliable delivery, on time, every time? This is a brand-new thing you’re doing, and even putting in a test-size order is a risk for us.”
“Great question, absolutely.” Marcus whips out a calculator and does some fast math. “The honest, no-BS answer is that we are not quite ready to be your comprehensive, sole supplier just yet. We simply don’t have the infrastructure in place—yet. We’re still a young company, still building it all out. But here’s what I’m offering. Order, say, a thousand units. I can fulfill that in a matter of two weeks, and that’s a guarantee. I’ll give you a thousand units for ten percent off what we would normally charge per section. Try them out. See what you think. I’m confident you’ll order more. And once we have cash flow, we’ll start going gangbusters building out our process. I know the numbers you guys are doing, in terms of framing section orders…if you take this chance on us, give us six months, and we can be your sole supplier.”
The Parent Trap Page 13